“We are in a year and a half going to get sort of what most of you think is a company that could be IPO’d with a couple hundred millions in revenue,” said Julia Steyn, GM vice president, Maven and Urban Mobility, addressing an audience of analysts and investors.

“This is just the beginning. That’s what we’ve done in two and a half years,” she said. GM announced its Maven launch in January 2016. The parent doesn’t break out Maven results separately.

Julia Steyn, GM vice president, Maven and Urban Mobility

Photo by Joe Wilssens for GM

Maven customers use its app to search for and reserve a vehicle, by location or car type, and unlock the vehicle with their smartphone. The app can also enable remote functions such as starting, heating or cooling and more, according to GM.

Steyn said Maven has more than 200,000 active members worldwide. The company is in about 20 cities worldwide and counting. U.S. markets include New York City, Chicago, Boston, Baltimore, D.C., San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Detroit, Denver, Phoenix, and Austin, Texas.

The Maven-owned fleet is expected to exceed 10,000 vehicles next year, and the company expects to have more than 300,000 members, according to the presentation.

Besides Maven’s own vehicles, the company also launched peer-to-peer service in July 2018, where individual owners can make their vehicles available for others to rent, starting in southeast Michigan including Detroit.

Demand for peer-to-peer rentals has exceeded expectations, “without $1 in marketing,” Steyn said. “We assumed it [metro Detroit] would be our worst market because people are emotionally attached to a vehicle,” she said.

On the contrary, she said Maven believes customers would prefer to be “vehicle- and brand-agnostic,” which is part of the reason why Maven is opening up to non-GM brands on the peer-to-peer side of the business. "We believe in the philosophy, 'A car is a car, is a car,' " Steyn said. The company expects to launch peer-to-peer service in all Maven markets by the end of this year.

The car-sharing concept takes some getting used to, but so did Airbnb, Steyn said. “People are not going to be buying cars that sit there 95% of the time, idle,” she said. “Two and a half years ago if I’m standing here saying this, you’d all think I was crazy.”